Question To what extent should an organisation or company aligned with a religious order be subject to general employment law? For example, in a general workplace, if someone became pregnant outside of marriage, there would be no issue in terms of their employment/maternity rights, etc. However, if someone works for a church organisation and the church believes that sex before marriage is wrong, condoning this scenario would be contrary to the belief system in place. I believe that any religion-based discrimination is wrong but I was wondering how one might philosophically justify this sort of dilemma.

Accepted:
March 19, 2008

Comments

Discrimination is wrong if it has no basis in a solid ethical reason for treating people differently, so I don't think you are right in saying that "any religion-based discrimination is wrong". A religion is entitled to take a negative view of a particular sort of behaviour and then to discriminate against the actor, and the distinction you draw between religious groups and others is not that relevant here. I work for a secular and public university in America, but could not insist on my right to lecture in German, for instance, if the reasonable expectation is that I would teach in English, nor to invite students for tutorials at 4 am, when the working hours of the institution are different. Nor do I think I could display in my office pornographic images or fly a swastika flag from my window. Why not? Because as you say "this scenario would be contrary to the belief system in place". Here we need to distinguish between minor and major deviations from the norm. The former is alright while the latter does raise serious difficulties.

Of course, someone who works for a church organization and who goes awry might reasonably expect to be forgiven.